The other day I had a conversation with my therapist about my most recent depressive episode. I had a mental breakdown leading to a huge dip that took months to recover.

I often think about the person I had to be back then, just to survive. It was hard for me to believe I did it.

“It’s a kind of superpower, really,” my therapist said. She was right.

If you’ve had to endure the dips of depression for a long time, it’s not always easy to give yourself credit. But it’s necessary.

For a lot of people, overcoming depression doesn’t happen once and then never again. According to Dr. William Marchand, psychiatrist, and clinical professor, at least 50% of those who recover from depression will have more than one episode. …

If you’ve been through some sort of product redesign, you know user complaints are impossible to avoid. No matter how well thought out the changes were, it’s almost guaranteed your users will hate it.

The reason behind this is quite simple. Most redesigns focus not only on changes but especially on new users and their onboarding process.

Even if the changes were supposed to make the flow easier, the barrier for existing users will be quite high. It’s a barrier that wasn’t there before.

“People just don’t like spending their time learning, they like to spend their time doing.” …

I have always been a fan of non-fiction on self-improvement. Before learning about the wave of this platform’s self-help craze, it was a guilty pleasure. Back then, it was all about the books. I’d save a multitude of recommendations to have an abundant backlog for whatever might tickle my fancy.

Every once in awhile, I’d go on a bender and buy a bunch of them at the same time because I got just excited enough to convince myself it was the right time.

A tingling feeling of possibility and opportunity on the horizon. Whenever I picked one of them up for the first time, I knew a significant change would follow it. …

The people we admire often share similar traits. We tend to look up to them and try to mimic their behavior. We want to reach their social standing, live a life similar to theirs, and become more trustworthy and respected ourselves.

But every human trait has its shortcomings.

Imitating them seems like a sure-fire way to get to where we want to be. They might hold the same values as us, but seem just better at going about life. But no matter how much we’d like it to, not every trait will come naturally to us.

Trying to be more likable and trustworthy is actually not that hard to do. But it can easily make us lose sight of our intrinsic needs. People might like and trust us more, but we may be still feeling miserable. The more we look at positive traits from just one side, the harder it gets to stay objective. …

If you’ve been around the Internet and Social Media the past few years, you’re probably aware of the ongoing trend surrounding house plants. What started as a few inspiring home decor pictures on Pinterest, slowly clawed its way to a plant “culture” and community amid Millenials.

According to the National Gardening Association they made up a quarter of U.S. lawn and garden retail sales in 2019.

Their rise in popularity made sense since there’s an abundance of physical and psychological benefits of owning and taking care of plants. Being nice to look at, is a bonus.

But why the sudden surge? What was it about the huge monsteras in loft apartments that got people hooked? What made people turn to artificial plants when they weren’t able to take care of real ones? …

I’ve been on the verge of quitting Social Media quite a few times. I succeeded in deleting apps from my phone for good, and I deleted a few accounts I saw no real use for.

But as a UX Designer, it is impossible for me to go completely “off the grid”. Not only is it part of my job to know how people interact with Media, but it is also the most common way of communicating and living, as of today.

We always interpret the world around us to make sense of what’s happening. To get results, our brain sometimes takes shortcuts that aren’t always accurate. …

It’s difficult to introduce drastic changes in a company’s culture. Oftentimes sustainability initiatives are only seen as part of the company’s product, instead of as part of the company’s culture.

Especially tech companies, agencies, and freelancers have a hard time figuring out what exactly they can do to be more sustainable. Digital products are often already the “more sustainable” choice but have been proven to still have a lot of problems when it comes to their effect on the environment.

Still, the scale often gets set too high and absolute. Making it a tedious task to start making changes. …

In 2003 a hardware chain commercial took Germany by storm. It only contained one simple sentence, dubbed by Bruce Willis’ voice actor.

“20% on everything — except pet food (tr.)”

A sale on everything? Wait, why not pet food? Is that Bruce Willis’ voice? People were instantly intrigued. The commercial fit perfectly into the stingy 2000s era of shopping. If you needed something and there was a place you could get it at a discount, that’s where you went. It became an easy choice. Praktiker’s sales were soaring. Other hardware stores could hardly keep up. They had proven themselves on a market that was lead by much bigger players. …